I find that with the current city management UI, it's very difficult for me to learn several of the key numbers related to FIDS production that I would like to use in my decision-making. I have some suggestions for relatively minor UI alterations that I feel would make this information much easier to access.





Flat vs Percentage Bonuses

It is my understanding that if you have two abilities that both give a % bonus to to production--for example, +15% dust from the tier 1 building and +30% dust from the tier 3 building--that those are added together to give a +45% bonus, not multiplied to give (1.15*1.3 =) +49.5%. If I'm wrong about this, you can pretty much ignore this section.



In order to understand how much a % bonus will help your city--for example, "+15% science" from a hero skill that you are deciding whether or not to learn--you need to know the size of the number that percentage is being applied to. Currently, there doesn't seem to be any way to figure this out other than to calculate it yourself almost from first principles: the city's total science output may give you a ballpark estimate, but since this includes the effects of other % bonuses it could be far off-- a city with 100 base science +50% from a luxury booster and a city with 150 base science both show "150", but your +15% science skill is going to give 50% more science in one city than in the other. None of the other values in the FIDSI table or mouseovers are particularly helpful, either--the +10 science and +10% science from the tier 1 science building are both rolled into a single "buildings" number, for example, and the science boost from my governor combines the +12 science per level and the +1% science per level into a single number. Disentangling it all is an enormous time-sink (and error-prone).



Similarly, to understand how much a flat bonus will help your city, you need to know the sum of all % modifiers that are going to be applied to it. It may look like a worker assigned to industry is producing more FIDSI than one assigned to dust because you have a hero with industrial efficiency 2 so the industry multiplier says "6" while the dust multiplier says "4", but if you've also got +45% dust from a couple buildings and +50% dust from a luxury booster, then in fact the dust workers are probably more productive (even after taking into account the +15% industry from the tier 1 building and the few percent from the hero skill that I probably also have in this scenario).



My proposal: in the city FIDSI table, replace the "city tiles" and "modifiers" rows with "flat" and "percentage" rows. The "flat" row shows the sum of all FIDSI ignoring percentile bonuses ("from city tiles" can be one of the line items when you mouse-over it), and the "percentage" row shows the sum of all percentage modifiers in effect (as a percentage--so if you've got 80 flat food and +50% food, the percentage row says "+50%", not "+40"). I can only speak for myself, but I believe these two new rows would be dramatically more useful to me than the rows they replace.



Showing the total flat FIDSI across your entire empire somewhere would also be handy when considering empire-wide bonuses, such as luxury boosters.





Preview Effects

When considering an action in the city screen that will affect my FIDSI output, I'd like to see a preview of the net change in output.



For example, if I'm moving 3 workers from industry to food, when I'm hovering over the food column with the workers on my cursor (but before dropping them), I'd like to see little pop-up numbers next to the city's total FIDSI showing "+X food" and "-Y industry", showing how my output will change if I reassign these workers. The number of turns to complete items in the build queue and the number of turns until my next population increase should have similar pop-ups showing how they change as a result.



Similarly, if I'm considering building a geomic lab (+2 science on city tiles with science), when I mouse-over that building in the build menu, I should see a pop-up indicating how my city's total science (and dust--it costs maintenance) output will change after I build it (assuming nothing else changes in the mean time). Maybe even a little "+2" popup on each city tile whose output will change. Right now, I have to count up all my city tiles with science output, double-check to make sure it's part of their base output rather than being added from some other ability ("+2 science on anomalies" doesn't seem to cause them to count as "tiles with science" for geomic lab), multiply by 2, factor in % science modifiers, etc. in order to figure out how much the geomic lab will actually help me--I'd rather let the computer take care of the bean-counting and just focus on the actual decision.

I agree that it's difficult to split up base FIDS from % increases. But on the other hand, restructuring the display for this would lose you the current format (or end up in a really large display), which breaks it down into contribution from workers, city buildings, heroes, items and external factors. By looking at those numbers and knowing which buildings/items/heroes you have, you can figure out which figures are %increase and which are base numbers.